You know this circus gag where a little clown car comes driving along, stops, and about two dozen clowns come out? How do they fit so many clowns in there? Is it a prespective thing? (the car being much larger than the audience perceives it to be)

My best guess is there is simply a hole in the bottom of the car, and the driver drives it over a trapdoor on stage where a bunch of clowns climb out. But perhaps they have a more creative way of doing this act?

They talked about it on Car Talk a couple of weeks ago. They said it's just a combination of contortion and stripping down the car. If you remove the seats there's a lot of room - you can even get into the trunk if the rear seat is removed. If the car is pushed rather than driven, you don't even need the controls.

Once you have been caught in a run way with six (six, count ‘em, six) flatulent elephants, no number of farting clowns would be intolerable--even packed into a stripped down 1963 VW Beetle. TOOT! TOOT!

"It's the most requested clown gag ever," asserts Greg DeSanto. "Everyone wants to see a lot of clowns come out of a really small car." Considering DeSanto's position as the executive director of the International Clown Hall of Fame and Research Center in the consistently hilarious burg of Baraboo, Wisconsin, this is an assertion that needs to be taken almost somewhat seriously.
"There's no trick to the clown-car gag," says DeSanto, who matriculated in the hallowed halls of Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Clown College and performed with the self-proclaimed "Greatest Show On Earth." "There are no trap doors in stadium floors, and the cars are real cars."

In fact, a clown car is fully functional. "We remove all of the interior," explains DeSanto, "including the door panels and the headliner, and paint the windows except for a small slot for the driver to see through. The driver sits on a milk crate. We remove any interior barrier to the trunk, and we beef up the springs so that the car doesn't seem to be riding on its bump stops. Then it's a matter of shoving in the clowns."

I'm disappointed in the 2003 Doper crowd for letting this go without a request for more details:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Spavined Gelding

Once you have been caught in a run way with six (six, count ‘em, six) flatulent elephants, no number of farting clowns would be intolerable--even packed into a stripped down 1963 VW Beetle. TOOT! TOOT!

I used to take my daughter to this small circus that wintered in our town. There was one ring, the ticket taker was also the acrobat, the lion tamer had one lion - that sort of tiny.

For the clown act, they drove into the ring in a VW bug and clown after clown kept coming out of the car. Of course everybody could see it was the same four clowns running around and getting back in the car on the other side. It was hilarious!

They're a superposition of quantum clowns, any number of which, being unobserved by the circus audience, can occupy the same space in the interior of the car. They only have to occupy distinct space from one another once they are observed, which only happens as they emerge from the car.

They're a superposition of quantum clowns, any number of which, being unobserved by the circus audience, can occupy the same space in the interior of the car. They only have to occupy distinct space from one another once they are observed, which only happens as they emerge from the car.

So if I ran up and peeked in the window, there would be a mass implosion of clowns? Would the car be damaged?

They're a superposition of quantum clowns, any number of which, being unobserved by the circus audience, can occupy the same space in the interior of the car. They only have to occupy distinct space from one another once they are observed, which only happens as they emerge from the car.

That's right, but it only works because clowns are Bozons. If they were Fermions, two could not occupy the same space.